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- Unity Next Gen unveiled at Unite, and would you game dev with $1mil?
Unity Next Gen unveiled at Unite, and would you game dev with $1mil?
Also four lessons from a first time indie dev, and how many wishlists to hit #100
Code Monkey
September 22, 2024
Hello and Welcome, I’m your Code Monkey!
I just got back from Unite, it was an awesome event!
A lot of people came up to me to tell me how my tutorials helped them on their learning journey, I love that and it makes me super motivated to keep making awesome videos!
If you came up to me then thanks so much! If you weren't able to attend then perhaps next year!
Game Dev: Unity Unite, Wishlists to #100, Indie dev 4 lessons
Fun: Game dev with $1mil?
Game Dev
Unite with Unity 6 and Next Gen Unity
Unity's yearly Unite conference has just wrapped up. They showcased lots of stuff in Unity 6 (out on Oct 17th) as well as what's coming in the future.
The Keynote and the Roadmap talks are already available on YouTube. They talked about the Graphics features in Unity 6, the previously shown Fantasy Kingdom project will be available as a free download.
They showcased their latest cinematic, Time Ghost. It looks insane with a ton of detail everywhere and it was running in real-time on a 4090. This will also be downloadable.
Multiplayer tools keep improving, the game Den of Wolves (from the makers of GTFO) made an appearance with a great trailer, they showed various stats on how mobile continues growing (Subway Surfers has 4B downloads!) and they're pushing really hard on the Web with Mobile Web and WebGPU.
So Unity 6 (and 6.1) is looking quite awesome, but I'm especially excited about Unity Next Gen with the integration of Game Objects and Entities. I spoke with Laurent Gilbert (who is in charge of DOTS) and asked him how exactly they were doing that and he told me it's basically just IDs. So Game Objects have an ID and a matching Entity that also has an ID. Then they automatically convert between one and the other depending on whether you're writing DOTS code or Game Object code.
On the roadmap they also clarified how this would not be a breaking change, it's really all just IDs so the core of the API should not change much.
This is great news because it means you can start learning DOTS right now (like with my DOTS Course) and your knowledge will still be valid when this massive Unity Next Gen update comes out.
Linking Game Objects and Entities will make it so much easier to use the right tool for the job. You will be able to seamlessly use Entities when you need extreme performance, and Game Objects when you just want to build something, you will be able to mix DOTS Components and MonoBehaviours, so you will no longer need to have essentially two separate worlds.
Beyond that they talked about how Unity Next Gen is being guided by 3 main principles: Simplicity, Iteration and Power.
Simplicity by doing things like the Unified Rendering that puts together URP and HDRP.
Iteration by implementing CoreCLR for much faster Domain Reloading and a new Data Model for much faster Asset Importing.
Power for all the DOTS improvements including brand new Animation and World Building Tools.
The event as a whole was really awesome, I was told they recorded all the sessions so they should be coming up on YouTube within the coming weeks.
 | I am right now writing my Unity 6 recap video, so much stuff to cover, and I'm really excited about the future of DOTS and Unity Next Gen. Also just before the keynote they announced the Unity Awards nominees and I was nominated for Best Tutorials! Thanks for voting for me! And again thank you so much to all the people that came up to me during the event, it was awesome to meet so many cool people! |
Affiliate
HUNDREDS of Animations (Rifle, Pistol, Ninja, Office, ...) for just $25!
Do you need animations for your projects? There’s an excellent HumbleBundle live right now all about animations.
It contains Rifle Animations, Pistol, First Person Sniper, FPS Shotgun, also non-combat packs like Park life, Office desk and Conversations.
The included Rifle Pack was the one I used in my Third Person Shooter Tutorial, I really like it.
These are technically Unreal Engine packs but animations (.fbx) are engine-agnostic so you can still use them in Unity.
The Mocap Online packs come with the .fbx in the source folder so you can just unpack those into Unity.
The ones by Maksim come with only .uasset, but you can import those into a Unreal Engine project and then easily Export them to be used in Unity.
Game Dev
Wishlist stats to reach Top 100
One developer has posted on Twitter that they have just hit 250,000 wishlists. And wishlist ranking is public so on SteamDB you can see the game is currently #100 in Wishlists. And it's another data point to validate the rough estimate that wishlists are about 10x followers. (game currently has 25k followers)
However three notes on this. Firstly the ranking isn't static, it all depends on all the other games on the charts and how many wishlists they have. Perhaps one year ago it took just 100k wishlists to get to #100, perhaps one year from now the number will be 300k.
Secondly, this chart might be based on the raw number of wishlists but the Steam algorithm also takes wishlist velocity into account. Meaning if you get 10k wishlists in a single day it will put you higher in various places in the algorithm as opposed to getting those 10k wishlists over the course of a year.
And the third point which is super important for indie devs like me, remember how you don't need this massive amount to find success with your games. Reaching the top 100 of wishlists likely means the game will sell hundreds of thousands of copies and likely has a budget 10x larger than most indie games. So don't compare yourself to these mega hits.
| I love it when people share stats, algorithms are so opaque nowadays so getting these stats is quite helpful. Although like I mentioned don't worry about hitting these numbers if you are an indie dev like me. My games have never reached anywhere close to the top 100 but they've still been successful to make a living for over a decade. |
Game Dev
Four lessons taken from a first game dev
Here is a really interesting post mortem on a game that did not find financial success, but was a resounding success as a learning project since it was the developers first game.
The 4 takeaways are very important for any dev to learn:
No market research before starting development
Not understanding the genre of the game
Made design decisions in an arbitrary way
Very poor game production planning
As always, these post-mortems are really useful so you can learn from the experience/mistakes of others without having to do those mistakes yourself. I think these devs learned lots of important lessons from this experience which will certainly help them do better with their next game.
Check out the very detailed videos I did with Steam Marketing Expert Chris Zukowski to learn more about game marketing. If you pay attention and do all of that you greatly increase your odds of finding success.
| I highly advise you to definitely take your time doing market research and not just jump on the first game idea that comes to mind (if the goal is financial success). I also advise you to be familiar with the genre you are building and know what players want from those games. I advise you to come up with core pillars for your game and make sure anything you add/remove will enhance the experience as a whole. And I advise you to do some proper planning, both in terms of game dev/design and in terms of marketing. Another thing I like is how they did a relatively quick dev cycle and they are taking what they learned and applying it to their next game. |
Fun
Would you still make games with $1mil?
What if you suddenly got $1 MILLION, would you still be making games?
It's an interesting question with some fun replies, including this one that says "I don't make games because I want money. I need money because I want to make games." which yup sounds about right!
Or maybe you're more like Peter (or Lawrence!)
| I am pretty sure I'm always going to be making games, regardless of money/age/time. The only thing that would change for me would be just doing it in a more relaxed manner without strict deadlines. But when I'm 80 I plan to still keep making games! (and going to the gym!) |
Making Successful Indie Games Is Simple (But Not Easy)
The title is very true, it is simple but absolutely NOT easy!
The Beauty of Isometric Video Games
I love the isometric style, spent many hours in my childhood playing RollerCoaster Tycoon, Desperados, Commandos, Constructor, etc.
Get Rewards by Sending the Game Dev Report to a friend!
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Thanks for reading!
Code Monkey
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